Florida Teacher Makes Students Wear Dog Cone Collars as Punishment

A Florida teacher could face serious punishment of her own after doling out a unique brand of strange punishment to her students. After showing the Pixar movie Up in her class, Laurie Bailey-Cutkomp, a science teacher at Zephyrhills High School in Pasco County, decided the best way to deal with misbehaving students was to put them in the kind of conical collars you see on sick dogs.

In the movie Up, the character Dug, a talking Golden Retriever, is forced to wear the conical collar, and it's referred to as "the cone of punishment." The collar, also known as Elizabethan collars, are usually meant to prevent dogs and cats who have just undergone surgery from chewing at their own wounds and stitches.

Bailey-Cutkomp decided to adopt the cones as her own form of punishment and made at least eight students wear them during class.

"Ms. Bailey-Cutkomp, your actions show extremely poor judgment and concern me for several reasons. I am stunned that you would put dog collars on students for any reason," wrote Pasco Superintendent Heather Fiorentino in a letter. "I am very concerned that you used this collar to punish and embarrass students in front of their peers."

The superintendent has now recommended that Bailey-Cutkomp be fired.

Though, at least one student who had worn the cone told WTSP that the whole thing was a joke, and that she feels terrible her teacher may now be fired.